Thanks also to lenders to Ron Mueck who stayed with us and enabled the major exhibition we have on now to proceed. We're exhilarated by the public response this far – and looking forward to large attendances during the final weeks. At this stage, we are only a few days short of an all-time record for a paying exhibition in the eighty or so years that there has been a public art gallery in Christchurch! Previously the most attended paying exhibition in this building was Cecil Beaton: Portraits with 29,063 visitors and we expect to surpass the more than 71,000 plus visitors to the Buried Army of Qin Shihuang at the Robert McDougall Gallery in 1986.

While we finished our financial year at the end of June with enviable results in terms of visitor numbers and visitor satisfaction, it's great now to finish the calendar year on such a high note. It seems that, despite a very slow month in September following the virtual close-down of Christchurch, our visitor numbers are once again tracking ahead of the same time last year.

In April this year Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū won the top Exhibition Excellence award at the New Zealand Museums Aotearoa annual conference for our new collection exhibition Brought to Light. And we were delighted with other accolades from the New Zealand design community when our new website and Bulletin magazine won major accolades at the BeST design awards.

A major project in 2009 was the installation of the Gallery's upstairs collection display in a new configuration in Brought to Light and we enjoyed changing several components by installing fifty different works in a refreshed version only last month. A personal highlight for me during the year was the purchase of an early Petrus van der Velden painting of the port of Rotterdam (It was drawn to our attention by former Gallery director Rodney Wilson, himself a van der Velden expert, and I was lucky enough to see it in the Netherlands about eighteen months ago). It is quite special to have this on show in such close proximity to The Dutch funeral and Mountain stream, Otira Gorge, both of which have never looked better than they do now in Brought to Light.

One of the rewards of working in an art gallery is the reality of constant renewal, at times demanding, but always exciting. It's wonderful to know that we have a range of stimulating and excellent exhibitions ahead of us in 2011. In February alone we open Leo Bensemann: A Fantastic Art Venture, Van der Velden: Otira and De-Building – a look behind the scenes of the art museum building from the perspective of a wide range of truly amazing artists.

One of our curatorial staff, Jennifer Hay, is leaving us in January to go to Adelaide. Her contributions over the last nine years at the Gallery include five exhibitions of young contemporary artists we have mounted over the last five years, including Uncanny Valley, which is on now; and two extensive solo exhibitions showing the work of Bill Hammond and Andrew Drummond. She contributed to the two major publications that accompanied these exhibitions and a range of other collective projects. She goes with our best wishes for her future.

In the new year, we shall have a small number of new staff announcements to make.

In the meantime, our very best wishes for the forthcoming holiday season. The Gallery is open every day except 25 December and we hope you visit often.